After last year’s European Championships snub, veteran rider is ready to rule
the world again

It was a bombshell. Last summer, after 10 Paralympic gold medals over four Games stretching back to Sydney in 2000, Lee Pearson CBE was dropped from the Great Britain team for the European Championships.

If you know Pearson, whose easy-going nature belies a competitive streak as steely as Roy Keane’s, you might have expected a comic-book explosion of seismic proportions.

Instead, Pearson, 40, who runs his own yard from his farm in Staffordshire, took it on the chin. It was a wake-up call.

“I got quite good scores, did all the selection trials, and only missed out on two competitions,” Pearson told The Telegraph. “So to not get selected was a bit of a blow. But I think it’s made me come back with more conviction this year. I didn’t lose my spark or my determination. Everybody thought, ‘He’s lost his mojo’. But I hadn’t.”

But Pearson is back, intrinsic in the five-strong GB para-equestrian team for this week’s World Championships, in Normandy, his vigour renewed and aiming to add to six previous gold medals won there.

The bottom line for success in equestrian sports, explains Pearson, is down to both horse and rider being right. Thus, selection will always be a complicated issue. “The horse has got to be fit and appropriate and I’ve got to be fit and appropriate.

I can be 100 per cent fit and appropriate, but if I’ve got a horse problem, I might not be selected. And vice versa.”

Pearson is not one to compromise, nonetheless. Or shy away from pragmatism, either in sport or life. He was born four decades ago with arthrogryposis multiplex congenita and first came to public attention in 1980 when then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher carried him up the stairs at 10 Downing Street, having awarded him a ‘Children of Courage’ medal.

Dozens of operations as a child to help his twisted limbs grow never held him back. In fact, he has always been ahead of his time. He has an irresistible relationship with horses, equine pursuits in the family going back to his great grandfather, who was a horse whisperer.

Two extraordinary horses have dominated in his life in recent years: Gentleman and Zion.

After not being selected for the Europeans, Pearson reassessed his relationships with both.

“I decided I wouldn’t ride Gentleman any more, not because we didn’t win a medal, but because he’s so unpredictable,” he said. “I need to know, more or less, how my horse is going to be.

“After the worlds, it then builds up to Rio, so I’ll probably be looking for another horse. I’ve been campaigning with Zion for a long time too. I enjoy riding Zion and I do a lot of the training with him myself – hacking along the roads, galloping on moors, going through the city. I know him inside out and he’s quite a powerful horse, a bit more predictable than Gentleman.

“With Gentleman, it was like a marriage. With Zion, it’s just like two naughty boys together. I call him Kevin. He’s into bling. He doesn’t know he’s got extravagant movement. He loves the attention in the arena – he loves people watching him. He’s a showman. If Zion is a Bentley, then Gentleman was more of a Formula One car. Very impressive but very powerful.”

It defies logic how Pearson, who uses a motorised chair, crutches and a quad bike – he is a bona fide speed freak – runs his yard. But it is tough.

“I could do with some more sponsors, especially between Paralympics. I’m on the hunt for sponsors and horses. Right now I only have Zion as an appropriate Paralympic horse. I feel fortunate to live where I live and to have built my own facility over the years. But that doesn’t mean I have money.”

Pearson believes in the power of the Equestrian World Games being fully inclusive for the second time. “They might not come to watch para-equestrian, but they might walk past our stadium and think, ‘Oh, I’d like to go and see that’. They might see us warming up.

“For me, Paralympic sport isn’t about being the best human being. It’s about being the best human being with that particular level of disability.

“But London was amazing and Greenwich was amazing for equestrianism and Paralympic sport. To think that we’re now seen as heroes to these youngsters is surely amazing. It’s a message of acceptance and it allows you to believe there will be less ignorance in the future.”